A Valentines Special 🤩

 Yeah, it's (well, it was...) the time of year where you go to the love of your life or your highschool sweetheart and ask them to be your Valentine. It's when the chocolates come out. The red roses bloom brighter than your blood. The giant teddy-bears. Valentines Day... it's just something different... but where does it come from and why do we give one day every year to take special time to love your close ones, when we can do that every day (that sounded so cliche)? It all comes from the legend of St. Valentine...

The month of February has always been dedicated to romance, and the legend of Saint Valentine pulls both Roman and Christian tradition. I'm not going to bore you all with dull and boring facts, because that tends to happen, but when we are talking about marriage and love, wouldn't it only be interesting? 

Saint Valentine

The Catholic Church looks up at 3 different saints who were all martyred. One legend says that Valentine was a priest who served in Rome, approximately around the 3rd century. Emperor Claudius II decided that single men didn't need to marry because they would be better off as soldiers. Valentine, who didn't like that law, defied his emperor and continued to perform marriages. When Emperor Claudius found out what Valentine was doing, he ordered him to be put to death. Of course, there isn't too big of a surprise there because we've all heard of cruel Roman emperors who played the violin while their city burned... yeah that was just Nero, but it doesn't justify anything, does it?

Other versions of his legend suggest that Saint Valentine had been killed for attempting to help Christians escape prisons where they were tortured (again, because we all know that's something Roman emperors thought was funny 🙄). One legend, in particular, suggests that Valentine was then imprisoned, and possibly sent the first love wish, now known as a "valentine", because he fell in love with his jailor's daughter. That's normal... 

Before he died in prison, historians and most people believe that he signed a letter to her, "From your Valentine," and so we carried forward that tradition. 

The Origins of Valentines Day

Some people believe that this day of love is celebrated in the middle of the month to honor Valentine's death anniversary. Others believe that the Christian church decided to place the holiday in February to "Christianize" one of their celebration (Lupercalia). This festival was dedicated to Romulus and Remus (the founders of Rome) and Faunus (the Roman God of agriculture). 

Priests would sacrifice a goat and a dog, both representing different things. Roman women would welcome the touch of those hides on themselves and their crop fields because it was believed to make everything more fertile in years to come. It is said (according to the legend that we're supposed to believe) that women would then put their names in essentially a giant vase and the city's bachelors-- the dudes, would choose a name and then get "paired" with that woman for a year, but we all can probably tell that these matches ended up with love and marriage 😏.

The Day of Love Itself: Valentines Day 😍

So basically, Lupercalia was soon outlawed because it was deemed "un-Christian" by a pope, and in the later years of the 5th century, a pope announced that February 14th was St. Valentines Day, but it isn't so clear why (history is never clear... shocker, I know...). It became associated with love later because, during the Middle Ages, February 14th was supposedly the beginning of birds' mating season so people collectively just went with it that February 14th should be a day for romance... (which makes me laugh because all of a sudden birds just influenced love). 

Love Birds 😏

Cupid, the little love-arrow shooting winged-child (that's normal)

So, we have all heard of Cupid, the little love-arrow shooting kid. Basically, he's a Roman God who has roots in Greek mythology as the God of love (Eros). Legend has it that he was either born from Nyx and Erebus or Aphrodite and Ares (that's actually kind of funny) and other stories suggest that he could be Iris and Zephyrus's kid or Aphrodite and Zeus (that is so weird so I don't know how to respond to that last group).

And it wasn't until the Hellenistic period in history that people started to perceive him as that chubby winged child who we all see on Valentine's cards and on the internet.

Until Next Time...

So I guess I was slightly incorrect. We didn't really talk about love... we talked about Emperor Nero even though he had nothing to do with the story, birds mating season, Roman priests, and the winged-baby-God.